Northwestern University scientists announce the discovery of a concussion diagnosis biomarker: the brain’s ability to process sound.

“This biomarker could take the guesswork out of concussion diagnosis and management,” says Nina Kraus, the Hugh Knowles Professor in the School of Communication and director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, lead author of the study, published in Scientific Reports.

“Our hope is this discovery will enable clinicians, parents and coaches to better manage athlete health, because playing sports is one of the best things you can do,” she adds, in a media release from Northwestern University.

In their study, the researchers measured the frequency following response—the brain’s automatic electric reaction to sound—in two groups of children: those who experienced concussions, and those who had not.

With this measure, they successfully identified 90% of children with concussions and 95% of children in the control group who did not have concussions.

Children who sustained concussions had on average a 35% smaller neural response to pitch, allowing the scientists to devise a reliable signature neural profile. As the children recovered from their head injuries, their ability to process pitch returned to normal, the release continues.

“Making sense of sound requires the brain to perform some of the most computationally complex jobs it is capable of, which is why it is not surprising that a blow to the head would disrupt this delicate machinery,” Kraus states.

What was surprising, she adds, was the specificity of the findings.

“This isn’t a global disruption to sound processing,” she continues. “It’s more like turning down a single knob on a mixing board.”

“With this new biomarker, we are measuring the brain’s default state for processing sound and how that has changed as a result of a head injury,” Kraus concludes in the release. “This is something patients cannot misreport, you cannot fake it or will your brain to perform better or worse.”

[Source(s): Northwestern University, Science Daily]